Befitting their grit and dedication, 49ers fans have come to be known over the years as “The Faithful.” Leading up to the 2011 season, that faith was put to the test like never before: the Niners had missed the playoffs nine consecutive years, and a lockout was looming. In other words, it was an excellent time to show some love to the fans. So we launched a social media campaign asking people, “what does Faithful mean to you?”
We then took those fans with the best answers and immortalized them on season tickets and in print, TV, and out of home ads. We even created a microsite to serve as the hub for all Faithful brethren, allowing them to create and share their own Faithful Fan Cards. Mercifully, the football gods smiled upon the 49ers and 2011 shaped up to be their best season in many years. Faith is a powerful thing.
The first phase of the campaign involved a social media contest to identify the most zealous fans.
Instead of featuring star players, we featured star fans.
Where fans could create and share cards from the era of their choice.
Examples of The Faithful’s cards.
Promoting ticket sales online.
Caption: Inviting fans to interact with the “Forever Faithful” site.
Two examples from the campaign, edited from longer-form documentaries that appeared online.
Promoting ticket sales in local newspapers.
Blanketing the Bay Area with overexuberance.
A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the campaign.
Our longstanding relationship with the Monterey Bay Aquarium constantly provides us with opportunities to tell a wonderful story. Every year, we’re tasked with promoting a new exhibit, while maintaining an overall brand personality that reflects the Aquarium’s mission to inspire ocean conservation. With every campaign, we try to create a sense of awe and wonder; this forces us to always be innovative, especially in our approach to media. Below, you’ll see some of our favorite examples, spanning several years of work. The results have been pretty spectacular, too. Pretty amazing what can happen when you break the walls between media and creative.
The full story, and results, of our “Secret Lives of Seahorses” campaign.
We transformed a dreary underground space into an awe-inspiring experience.
Seahorses searching for love.
We transformed a fleet of San Francisco cabs.
Herbie Hippocampus became quite the online celebrity in his quest for a mate.
A trip to the Aquarium is truly magical.
We devised a video game that could be played via mobile device. The truck made appearances all around SF.
In partnership with the Hyatt Regency, we turned the San Francisco hotel into a 17-story ad for the Aquarium.
How do you get people to care about which internet browser they use? They’re all pretty much the same, right? Well, maybe to the casual observer. But when we dug a little deeper as part of a brand strategy assignment for Mozilla Firefox, we found some interesting things. First, in interviews with staff, management, and the developer community, we found a zealous commitment to protecting an open internet. (Mozilla is a non-profit foundation.) Next, our research showed that the vast majority of Firefox’s 450 million users didn’t know about the nonprofit mission, and further, that once people heard about it, they were far more likely to choose Firefox. And thus, a campaign was born. First, we armed the internal audience with tools (a brand book, microsite, and compelling language) to spread the story and encourage downloads. Now we’re reaching outwards with out of home and online campaigns. Stay tuned for what’s next.
Our strategic assignment resulted in a book that set forth the brand’s position, look, and voice.
Conveying Firefox’s point of difference in a few short words.
How better to reach the tech community than as they commute to Silicon Valley every morning?
As we were working on the brand strategy, we needed to encourage downloads. Here’s what we did.
Pacific Life came to us with an interesting problem: while their corporate symbol, the humpback whale, was widely recognized, the long-running advertising campaign in which it was featured was generally disliked. In our qualitative research, we quickly discovered a major disconnect; the audience considered the use of the whales gratuitous and irrelevant. Our solution? Don’t throw the humpback out with the bathwater. Instead, find a relevant link between the whales and Pacific Life’s proposition: investing in the future. The result? In the words of our client, “the best commercials we’ve ever done.”
Whales are interesting. Life insurance is not. Here's how we made Pacific Life's corporate symbol relevant.
Nothing gets tuned out faster than a life insurance commercial. But people are interested in their children’s future.
Knowing that consumers tend to gravitate toward small-wine labels, how do you take a boutique brand to mass-market without giving up its cachet and loyal following? For Blackstone Wine we crafted a campaign that felt intimate and homespun (unlike anything a big winery would do) in celebration of simple moments. No vineyards, winemakers, or smiling yuppies—just simple illustrations and thoughtful, semi-serious instructions on how to use Blackstone. Our media buy was kept intentionally low-key: single pages in magazines, and small (but often unique) newspaper and online units. The result? Blackstone sales went up 35% in the first year of the campaign, followed by two more years of double-digit growth. It surpassed far larger players in the category to become the #1 selling Merlot in America. And in a Bon Appétit reader survey, one of our Blackstone ads had the highest recall of any ad in the publication. Ever.
All elements of the campaign, including retail displays and sales kits, featured Laura Stoddart’s engaging illustrations.
Part of a strategic partnership with the NY Times, whose readers are 57% more likely to drink wine than average folks.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium may be world-renowned, but will people from across the country, or from the other side of the world, make the trip just to see it? Unless they happen to be marine biologists, probably not. But, if we position the entire Monterey area as the destination, they just might. The “Visit Monterey” microsite was created to broaden the Aquarium’s reach by highlighting the richness, history, and natural beauty of the entire Monterey Peninsula. And there’s a lot to highlight. People can ride bikes next to crashing waves, sip perfectly chilled Sauvignon Blanc at a winery, and get lost in the world’s oldest redwood forest just minutes away from the Aquarium, where they can safely marvel at Giant Jellies.
Driving Monterey Bay Aquarium visits by promoting Monterey as a destination.
We helped Bare Escentuals, a mainstream cosmetics company, create a new brand specifically designed to appeal to younger, more adventurous women. With a name like Buxom, we certainly weren’t going to take a conservative approach. The case study below will give you a peek into the process of creating and successfully launching a new brand, utilizing the power of digital media and event marketing.
How we helped create and launch the brand.
Establishing the look, feel, and voice of the brand.
Promoting the launch event in New York.
Driving traffic to “Confessions” site.
Introducing the brand with a provocative site.
How do you protect an iconic brand like Dr. Martens from the whims of the fashion industry? Mostly, by staying true to your roots, which in the case of Dr. Martens, means defying convention at every turn. So that’s just what we did with Docs’ advertising. We commissioned a series of short documentary films that became the centerpiece of a print, online, and out of home media campaign. The case study video below gives you a behind-the-scenes look, and points to some amazing results.
Everything you need to know in 3:07.
Promoting the brand by promoting the films.
As seen in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
Collateral materials to support on-campus events.
A sampling of the Veer films.
Starting in 2007, we worked with Catholic Healthcare West on a series of ad campaigns directed at policy makers expressing CHW’s support for universal health care, a cause very much in line with their deep Catholic roots, which dated all the way back to 1854. However, in 2011 the changing healthcare landscape, combined with the Roman Catholic Church’s increasingly stringent doctrine, led Catholic Healthcare West to make the difficult decision that it needed to change its name. In hiring us over the prestigious branding firms for the sensitive task of renaming and repositioning the organization as more inclusive, modern and forward-thinking, they cited the simplicity, clarity, and humanity of the past work we’d created for them, pointing out that we not only understood their business better than anyone, but their heart and soul.
Supporting health-care reform as California legislators debated the issue.
A more far-reaching effort to keep health-care reform top-of-mind.
CHW hired us to come up with a new name. We then announced the change through these consecutive half-page ads.
We followed our initial launch ads with a series of full-page ads that explained why Dignity was such a fitting name.
In D.C., online efforts spoke to what policy makers cared about most: providing better care at lower cost.
What’s the most important thing a hospital can tell people to inspire confidence? That they have the finest doctors? The most cutting-edge technology? A whole wing dedicated to clinical research? For our client Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, we took a less rational tack, finding unexpected ways to communicate that the most important thing a hospital can offer its patients are results—the most critical being the ability to return to living a healthy, meaningful life. Because our work avoided the typical health care clichés and connected in a more honest, emotional way, we helped Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula overcome the much larger advertising spend of its competitors in the area. And we did so working with a very limited budget.
Our client gave us a laundry list of results-oriented facts and statistics and said, “Use these to talk us up.” Did we ever.
A spot that said a lot about the hospital’s cancer care center, without having to say much at all.
The hospital’s new wellness center was all about healthier bodies and happier minds.
He is a highly regarded writer and best-of-breed worrier who sweats the small stuff as much as the big. He has a keen awareness of both the client’s realities and the consumer’s intelligence, and strives to accommodate both. He has been recognized by all the major creative competitions, having won One Show gold pencils, Cannes Lions, Clios gold, and honors from CA and D&AD.
Before starting EC1, he spent seven years as a writer and associate Creative Director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Before that, he helped launch Acura at Ketchum/LA, and Saturn at Hal Riney & Partners. He’s worked a wide range of accounts in a wide range of categories, including TiVo, the San Francisco Chronicle, Polaroid, Restoration Hardware, Nike, Constellation wines and Unum insurance.
He was once considered the “nicest guy in advertising,” but is currently ranked #16.
He has 30+ years in the agency business, 25 in the San Francisco market. First as Account Director and Director of Operations at Young & Rubicam. Then as Director of Business Development and Account Resources at Goldberg Moser O’Neill. Then as Managing Director of FCB’s Technology Group. Then as President of Odiorne Wilde Narraway and Partners Advertising (OWNP). Then as Co-President and Managing Director of London-based, Leagas Delaney’s San Francisco office. Then as founder of his own agency, BuderEngel.
He has worked in the U.S. and overseas on big, global brands like Chevron, Dell, Disney, Virgin, Kraft and Clorox, but finds equal pleasure in helping smaller brands become big.
He is a warm, light hearted guy who is deadly serious about knowing his stuff. He grew up in Philly and played football at Cornell. He has been married for 19 wonderful years and constantly bores people with stories of his daughter, Lily (15), and son, Ben (12), often telling his much-decorated creative partners that his kids are the only awards he needs.
He spent nine years at Wieden + Kennedy and was the creative director on Nike, ESPN, Subaru and Miller Beer. He won an Emmy Award for his ESPN College Basketball Campaign. He was Creative Director on ESPN’s SportsCenter campaign, voted Best Campaign of the Decade by ADWEEK magazine.
He was asked to judge at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, but went surfing instead. He won 2 Gold Lions that year. (Maybe he should surf more often?) He was featured in The New York Times best-selling book “Where The Suckers Moon” which documented a year behind the scenes in the making of the groundbreaking Subaru campaign.
He has won every advertising award there is but mostly keeps that to himself. Creative people love to work for him, and clients love to work with him. (Could be that “keeping it to himself” thing.)
He was born and raised in sunny Orange County, CA, where along the way he earned a reputation as one of Disneyland’s finest Jungle Cruise skippers.
He started his media career at WPP-owned MediaEdge, bringing media to agencies such as Young & Rubicam, working on clients such as Chevron and Cingular Wireless. At Omnicom-owned OMD, he worked with creative agencies such as Chiat/Day, BBDO and DDB on Nissan, Wells Fargo, Visa and ABC.
As Group Media Director of Toronto-based Gee Jeffery and Partners, he oversaw media operations in the agency’s Cincinnati, San Francisco and Toronto offices. There he launched award-winning campaigns for Covad Communications and Cincinnati Bell, and took the Toyota dealers into their first-ever online campaign.
From there, Nick was recruited by Google to spearhead the multi-million dollar advertising launch of Google Checkout. This led him to start a media consultancy eventually acquired by a creative agency, where he built a full-service media operation, cross-training teams to plan and buy both traditional and interactive media.
Over his time with us, Nick has grown the media team to a full-service international offering, driving media strategy and execution for clients such as Mozilla Firefox, Bare Escentuals, Disney, Jiffy Lube, Monterey Bay Aquarium and many more.
In addition to all of the above, Nick is a sports enthusiast, tech geek and Broadway show buff, who in his spare time has recently managed to earn an MBA, get married, and have his first child.
Brendan apparently took Horace Greeley's call to "Go west, young man" very seriously. A native Nebraskan, he has traversed the west coast from San Diego to San Francisco to Portland and back to San Francisco again, working for great agencies like Vitro/Robertson, Wieden + Kennedy, and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners along the way. At Engine Company 1, he pairs keen strategic sensibilities with an amazing knack for bringing order to chaos, allowing him to be both an advocate of great creative and a responsible steward of our clients' business interests. But then, he's always been a man of contradictions. How many people do you know who will routinely rattle off Cornhusker football stats while sipping a nice chilled glass of rosé?
EC1 is proud to partner with Karin Knutson on all things strategy. Whether you call it account planning, brand strategy, connection planning, insert-latest-newly-named-discipline-here or just plain “strategy,” that’s what she does. She’s a problem solver—specializing in those problems that revolve around consumers and brands.
Over the past two years, Karin has worked on some of EC1’s biggest projects - most notably the repositioning of the Mozilla Firefox brand which was voted a “best brand book in the business” along with Apple, Nike and Intel by The Next Web in 2011. Karin’s strategic experience spans traditional account planning as well as media strategy - which makes her an invaluable asset to the EC1 team. Her experience and personal network of freelance talent create a scalable strategy group able to meet EC1 clients’ needs and budgets.
Prior to becoming an independent consultant in 2007, Karin was a Planning Director at Wieden + Kennedy. She was a lead player in rebuilding the Account Planning department which was voted the “#1 most desirable place for planners to work in the US (2007).” Additionally, she led Nike women’s three most successful campaigns of the decade. Karin has worked on many world-class brands over the course of her career including Nike, Target, Proctor & Gamble, HBO, Barclays, Nikon and Microsoft to name a few. She’s worked both domestically and abroad in markets like China, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Mexico, the UK and New Zealand. Her work has been acknowledged through various industry awards including EFFIE awards, Cannes Lions, Clio Awards, Kelly Awards, OBIE Awards, Addy Awards, and Good Bad and Ugly Awards (which celebrate superior women’s advertising).
Karin’s favorite pastimes include: people watching (anywhere, anytime), golfing, pretending she’s a chef, tasting wine, drinking Guinness, supporting up-and-coming artists and reading (anything, anytime).
He’s a Jersey boy by way of New York who considers himself a Californian. He studied biochemistry at Rutgers with plans to attend med school. He ended up at Cooper Union and The School of Visual Arts and learned to operate on brands.
Along with being an accomplished producer who can produce pretty much anything thrown his way in any medium, he is well-versed in account management, graphic design, operations, finance and watering the plants. (A Frank of all trades.) He has worked at a long list of great agencies on a long list of great clients, including adidas, Disney, ESPN, Sega Sports, Foster’s Beer and Saab.
He’s an avid traveler, an avid gardener and an avid fan of the Mets, Knicks and Rangers. (And somehow even avid New Englanders enjoy working with him.)
Once you've fled your home country on a naval ship with your father at the helm, nothing much frightens you. Suosdey arrived in the U.S. from Cambodia at the age of 18 months and has tackled every challenge since with utter fearlessness. Before joining EC1, Suosdey created amazing work at Leagas Delaney, Hal Riney & Partners and Eleven, for brands like HP, adidas, Sprint and Apple. She also has a nurturing side (she's the mother of two adorable kids) which has helped make her an excellent mentor of young creative talent. Work with her, and you're likely to receive 4 a.m. PDFs brimming with wonderful ideas; when (or if) she actually sleeps, no one knows for sure.
She is a Marin County native and a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Business School. She worked at a public accounting biggie for 5 years before moving on to advertising, fulfilling her dream to wear jeans at work.
She spent 6 years as Controller at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, managing a staff of 9 and facilitating that agency’s tremendous growth in the early ‘90s. She went on to become an advertising accounting consultant, setting up and maintaining systems for various small agencies.
She has worked exclusively with us for the past 15 years. We couldn’t have survived without her. Seriously. She is the kindest, most earnest, most honest person we know, a sort of strange but wonderful cross between Mother Teresa and Mary Tyler Moore. She’s a great mom, a serious yogini, loves to cook and bake, and spends the rest of her spare time at the beach sunning, swimming and counting grains of sand. (An accountant through and through.)
He’s had two other adult jobs. Started at his father’s agency in Dallas. Stayed 12 years. Moved to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Stayed 4 years. Left to start current company. He’s won a lot of awards. He used to care a lot more about that. Now he cares more about the kinds of things his clients care about.
He’s an Art Director trapped in a Writer’s body. Or is it the other way around? Chronologically, he is 70% Texan and 30% Californian. He bikes a lot. He runs a lot. He swims only as much as he has to (which has been just enough to get him through 10 ironman races). He has two grown sons and a decidedly ungrown dog.
April 24, 2012
The old truism has never been, well, truer. (For those of you unfamiliar with it, the saying refers to a tradesman's tendency to constantly be preoccupied with work for other people). In our case, we've shepherded countless brand identities, campaigns and websites to timely completion for our clients, but we've been embarrassingly slow in getting our own update done. At long last, though, it's here. The new EC1 site better reflects who we are today and showcases our work in a more user-friendly format. We're also using this occasion to mark a re-boot of our blog. Our Facebook page will tend to house more of the day-to-day cultural happenings and fun stuff; here, we'll try to stay more on-topic with a focus on humanity in marketing, posting articles that will hopefully prove useful to others who want to make a positive difference in the way brands communicate. (Obviously, we reserve the right to sneak in a self-serving post about our own work every once in a while.) Thanks for stopping by and trying our new shoes on for size.
Engine Company 1
451 Pacific Ave
San Francisco, CA 94133
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Tel: 415-989-2500
Fax: 415-732-9535